To him succeeded Francis Kimberley, the only reasoning animal, who resided at No. 60, in Dale-end, from his early youth to extreme age. A hermit in a crowd! The windows of his house were strangers to light. The shutters forgot to open; the chimney to smoke. His cellar, though amply furnished, never knew moisture. He spent threescore years in filling six rooms with such trumpery as was just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept. His life was as inoffensive as long. Instead of _stealing_ the goods which other people used, he _purchased_ what he could not use himself. He was not difficult in his choice of the property that entered his house; if there was _bulk_, he was satisfied. His dark house, and his dark figure, corresponded with each other. The apartments, choked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for I never knew a corpulent conjurer. His diet, regular, plain, and slender, showed at how little expense life might be sustained. His library consisted of several thousand volumes, not one of which, I believe, he ever read; having written, in characters unknown to all but himself, his name, the price, and the date, in the title-page, he laid them by for ever. The highest pitch of his erudition was the annual almanack. He never wished to approach a woman, or be approached by one. Should the rest of men, for half a century, pay no more attention to the fair, some angelic hand might stick up a note like the arctic circle over one of our continents, “this world to be let.” If he did not cultivate the acquaintance of the human species, the spiders, more numerous than his books, enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of quiet. The silence of the place was not broken; the broom, the book, the dust, or the web, was not disturbed. Mercury and his shirt performed their revolutions together; and Saturn changed _his_ with his coat. He died in 1756, as conjurers usually die, unlamented.[63] [61] The word is not pronounced the same as _gipsy_, a fortune-teller; the _g_, in this case, being sounded hard as in _gimlet_. [62] I am somewhat embarrassed by this difference between two valued correspondents, and I hope neither will regard me in an ill light, if I venture to interpose, and deprecate controversy beyond an extent which can interest the readers of the _Table Book_. I do not say that it has passed that limit, and hitherto all has been well; perhaps, however, it would be advisable that “A Reader” should confide to me his name, and that he and my “Old Correspondent,” whom I know, should allow me to introduce them to each other. I think the result would be mutually satisfactory. W. H. [63] Hist. of Birmingham. * * * * * PATIENCE. _For the Table Book_